What Kind of Web Stats Should I Aim For?

What Kind of Web Stats Should I Aim For?

Whether you have a brand new website or one that you’ve managed for years it’s important to stay on top of your site’s statistics. As frequent readers of this blog know, we prefer Google Analytics to accomplish this, but there are a number of solutions available to keep track of your website data.

Once you have analytics installed you’ll want to evaluate specific criteria. Below I’ve listed several key areas to monitor, including what your should aim for. Obviously expectations will vary from industry-to-industry, but for the sake of this article we’ll focus websites for medical and aesthetic practices.

Unique Traffic: this is the most important statistic to monitor. Sure, conversions result in leads, which can eventually result in new business, but without increasing unique traffic you’ll have a difficult time increasing conversions. Study the seasonality of your business, and know the busiest times of year based on unique visits, both overall as well as uniques from search traffic. There is not set number to aim for here, just look to gradually grow your traffic every month, or at the very least compared to the same period last year.

Average Visit Duration: this stat reflects how long people are staying on your website. It’s safe to say that the longer they stay on your website the more interested they are, and the more interested they are the more likely they’ll convert into a lead. While there’s no set time to aim for, you certainly want people to stay on your website for more than a minute, and arguably more than two minutes. If they’re leaving before then, you need to determine which page the majority of people are landing on (most likely it’ll be the home page). You’ll then need to evaluate that page’s content and layout to see if it can be more inviting and interesting. If you can keep this stat above three or four minutes that’s ideal, but keep in mind that if your visits are six or seven minutes and they suddenly drop to three minutes you’ll need to re-evaluate you website.

Bounce Rate: this stat is tied to the average visit duration. A “bounce” is when someone visits a page on your website without clicking to a second page. I’ve seen several websites claim that the average bounce rate for all websites is between 40-60%. Of course, this number is meaningless since a website’s bounce rate will vary based on a wide variety of factors. An aesthetic website should be focused on lead generation. Thus, I would aim for a 30-50% bounce rate. Now, like the average visit duration, if you notice that your bounce rate was hovering around 15% and now it’s suddenly stuck around 40% you’ll want to see what might be causing this. Is your content relevant? Interesting? Organized? Keep in mind that once you start evaluating individual pages the bounce rate can be deceiving, so you’ll need to evaluate the bounce and exit rate to get a true analysis (I’ll explain this in a future article).

Conversion Rate: this is the percentage of total traffic that results in a conversion. It’s impossible to say that a good conversion rate is x, because a conversion can be a sale, a lead, a page visited, or any number of actions taken by visitors. That said, if we’re solely focused on leads, a conversion rate of .05 to 3% is solid. If you’re looking at paid traffic I would aim for the conversion rate to be at least 3-5%. Now, don’t get too caught up in these numbers because their significance will vary depending on the size of your website. For example, a website that gets 10,000 unique visitors a month with a .05% conversion rate is generating 50 web leads every month. I’ll take that over a site with a site that has 500 unique visitors a month but a 3% conversion rate (15 leads per month). The bottom line here is to be aware of your conversion rate and monitor any extreme fluctuations, but keep in mind that the end goal is to increase the number of leads. In order to do this we need to grow unique traffic, and if we sacrifice the conversion rate a little in the process so be it.

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Tom joined Matt in 2010, helping co-found Turbo Medical Marketing. As COO, Tom oversees all production and works directly with both the executive team and the Account Managers. Tom has helped to formulate systems and processes for sales, business development, internal marketing, service offerings, client intake, and employee hiring and training.
You can get a sense of Tom's marketing knowledge, as well as pick up some marketing tips and insights, by checking out the Turbo blog that he contributes to weekly. Tom has also spoken at several aesthetic conferences in the past about topics ranging plastic surgery technology to mobile marketing.
Tom received his B.A. in Business Management Economics from the University of California at Santa Cruz. He is a former collegiate rugby player and he enjoys golfing, snowboarding, hiking, and playing with his dog Yogi in his spare time. He's also a mentor with the Big Brothers, Big Sisters program in Charleston. Tom lives with his wife Lindsay in Mt. Pleasant, SC.